Apple halving iPhone X production in Q1

While the 6.1-inch version certainly sounds like a high-end iPhone, Kuo claims that it is, instead, supposed to be a more affordable version of the $999 (£999) iPhone X, featuring an aluminium frame, a lack of 3D Touch, a single rather than a dual-lens camera setup and 3GB of RAM.

Apple's stock is backtracking from its recent highs amid mounting concerns that iPhone X sales will fall short of the high hopes for a device that brought facial recognition technology and a $1000 price tag to the company's flagship product line. According to Forbes, Kuo's note pegs the 6.1-inch, mid-range LCD iPhone model that Apple is rumored to be launching later this year as the "iPhone X SE".

According to Kuo, between the three phones Apple released a year ago (iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X) and the three phones rumored to be released this fall, the company may not have enough development resources for an SE follow up as a fourth phone for 2018. The combined impact on suppliers that make the components for the iPhone X will run supposedly reach into the billions of dollars.

For example, Murata Manufacturing has been churning out its MetroCirc circuit boards - key to making the phones as thin as they are - around the clock since early January.

Samsung already reduced OLED production for the iPhone X by 10%, a report said last week. It is expected to be powered by 2850-2950mAh battery. The iPhone X may have been the best-selling smartphone of the Christmas quarter, but sales momentum was apparently lost after that. Meanwhile, a DigiTimes report said that the company is gearing up for the release of not two, but four new next-generation iPhone models. Increased output, coupled with decreased iPhone X-related demand, could cause NAND prices to slide further. The quarterly results will be announced Thursday, U.S. time.

But Apple likely performed strongly in the October-December quarter, given that the iPhone X did not launch until November.